Mi Vacacion de Verano

By Mike O’Neil

We flew down to Puerto Vallarta this past summer. It is a small Mexican town on the west coast of Jalisco, situated on the Bahia de Banderas (the Bay of Banderas) with well- founded contentions of grandeur. It has always been known for its beaches, which run for many miles, and its forest iguanas—of which there are fewer and fewer.

Jeanne and I have taken occasional day trips to Mexican border towns over the years, but this was a full week. We lived in a mountainside villa (Villa Las Palmeras) within walking distance of the town center, in the company of our son Dan, his partner Rick, and about 25 other hard-playing, hard-drinking 30-somethings—their pals. And though it was sub-tropically hot, and in the middle of the August rainy season, since Dan had offered to fund the whole thing, who could turn down such an adventure?

Several rivers run through the town, and in the rainy season uncountable side streams and freshets tumble down through the hills and mountains that form the sheer backdrop along the coast. Intense greens and browns are the landscape colors that strike the eye. Tropical jungle foliage clings to the sides of the nearly vertical mountains. Rockslides are not uncommon—driving along its twisting main road up through the countryside is a jarring, tooth-grinding venture. Most everyone speeds, giving little care for safety. It can be fatal. Several weeks ago, a sight seeing van, much like the one we piled into occasionally, plunged over a steep embankment and crashed on the rocks seventy feet below. All eleven occupants died.

The town, viewed from the elevated vantage point of the Villa, was quite beautiful. When it was not raining, the sunsets were an orange-pink magnificence, and fireworks often lit up the night sky. To me its crowning glory is the main church in the center of town—Our Lady of Guadalupe—whose tower is in fact topped with a huge facsimile of Empress Carlota’s crown. This struck me as odd because, as you will no doubt recall, Carlota’s husband, the Emperor Maximillian, Arch-Duke of Austria, and she were installed as rulers of Mexico by Napoleon the third—all backed up by his French army. The Mexicans themselves for the most part didn’t take kindly to this colonialist incursion. Eventually, in 1867, a few years after our civil war, we told the Frenchies to withdraw their forces. Their army left, but through a misguided mixture of hubris and noblis oblige, Maximillian stayed—only to be shot full of holes by the Republican minions of Benito Juarez. My question—why would the Mexican Catholic establishment in Puerto Vallarta chose to venerate the crown of an oppressor? Life is full of mysteries. The crown is mighty pretty though.

The town itself is generally driven by a tourist economy. It is clean and cheerful. You find many jewelry stores selling a great deal of silver, restaurants of all sorts (HOOTERS and HARDROCK CAFÉ are oddly prominent), and in every third store it seemed, large signs boast genuine Cuban cigars. I bought two.

But for the glitzy storefronts, there is an ever-present patina of knife-edge poverty slipping out at the edges. The cadaverous, cleanly dressed woman sitting mutely on the steps of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, holding an empty plastic cup just a bit forward of her knee; the ever-present street venders politely but insistently plying their wares. There was no begging, but there was a definite need to sell one’s box of goods, in a town where skilled construction workers make four dollars a day—and it’s a very long day, indeed.

Speaking of the jungle habitat, Jeanne and I had good reason to know the particulars of its flora and fauna. Along with the rest of the young friends of Dan and Rick, and Rick’s parents Jessie and Merla (two people closer to our age than the rest) we went on a southbound rattly open-air camion and drove well into the single-lane dirt road raw countryside. It’s not that we didn’t know what we were getting into. The brochure for LOS VERANOS CANOPY TOUR pictures people smiling, and eventually most of us did too, after it was over. The abomination is called zip-lining.

Steel cables had been strung high in the jungle canopy upon the stronger trees. They lead to a number of platforms from top to bottom. One is fitted out with various hooks and harnesses. Eventually, one is hooked onto a handheld device that rings onto the cable, pushed off the platform with the admonition “Hold your legs straight, Senor,” as you go “zipping” down and across a 500 foot forested abyss on your way to the next way station (there were fourteen such things in all). At one really dicey point of descent I screamed, not intentionally meaning to take the entity’s name in vain—JESUS H. CHRIST!!!

By the way, the young Mexicanos in charge of this operation didn’t call me Senor—there was a certain sense of errant fun and competence in all this. They took to calling me Santa Claus—for my girth and snow white beard, I suppose. And when mis amigos Pablo y Carlos would call me that as they advised me to lift my leg and hold onto the damn rubber handles, as they hooked me up to the cable for the next terrifying descent, I would say to them, “ Que deseas par la Navidad, Chicos? (What do you want for Christmas, little boys?).” They ignored the humor of this bit of Spanish. Just as well—that was not the time to distract them.

Zipping over the terrible chasms I never looked down—always looked straight ahead, but Jeanne told me she did once. Once was enough for her.

We survived and made it to the bottom, where cold beer and DVD’s of our adventure awaited us. Paisanos offered to place a large tarantula on your neck or face, for photo ops. I didn’t bite, so neither did the spider.

More of the Villa Las Palmeras. It was an obscure, private place run by an ever attentive staff who fed us, cleaned, and otherwise saw to our needs. There was air conditioning of a sort in our rooms; mi amigo Jorge saw to the place settings and the delivery of meals, assisted by a dour-faced Jesus. .Oh! For the guacamole y frijoles de Anna Rosa—our cook. Las Palmeras translates literally to “the palm trees” and water coconut palms ringed the villa, with green coconuts ready to fall.

There was one Mexican delicacy that I had looked forward to, which I eventually discovered was not to be had in Jalisco—grilled goat (en Espanol se llama cabrita asada). Some years ago, my friends Bob and Margie Lyons told me about it, and described it as akin to a delicate lamb. Jesse and I were both interested in the thought of tasting it, but to no avail. After an interrogation of Anna Rosa and her kitchen staff en Espanol, we were given the name of Restaurante de O’Reguan situated on the corner of Collonia y Vovadilla. But before Jesse and I made the mistake of going there, we were told that the place didn’t serve grilled young goat at all. They served mutton stew. Have you ever eaten mutton (i.e. fatty old sheep)? Not my favorite. I daresay, not yours either. We were advised eventually, that we’d have to travel to Monterrey, to find it, and that it was certainly not to be found in Jalisco. Chiwawah!

22 Augusto ‘07